Children Raising Children

Children Raising Children

A Haitian nurse told me the other day that “Children cannot raise children”. This is very true.

There will be more than 15 million children in sub-Saharan Africa that will have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS by 2010. Their first line of defense, their parents, are sick or gone. When kids grow up without parents they are subject to many evil things like hunger, lack of touch, and not enough love. They have poor to absent education, and insufficient medical and dental care. They become marginalized and discriminated against. They become a traumatized population.

In Haiti thousands of the kids live on the street. Many become restaveks (child slaves). The children are abused.

Haiti has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Forty percent of Haiti’s children less than five years old suffer from moderate to serious growth problems. Over 90% of Haiti’s kids have worms at some point in their lives.